LH earning
 

Trying to make sense of earning A3 miles on an LH flight.

Seems the deeply discounted business class as a P fare earns no miles with A3. Understand this is the case with other *A airlines as well. Fair enough.

Now looking at PE with LH. According to the LH website their premium economy flex ticket (i.e. most expensive and least restrictive ticket) is booking class E. According to the A3 miles can't be earned on E class bookings. Am I missing something? If so, anyone find that a bit odd?

LH PE is new, A3 didnt update their earning chart so no earning. E used to be a low economy fare

One of the worst discrepancies is that A3 cardholders earn nothing for T class flights. This is a very common medium cost LH economy fare and it earns mileage on most other programs.

T is the 3rd lowest econ fare out of 12, I wouldnt call it "medium cost" or the " worst discrepancy".

Bear in mind that LH is pretty much the stingiest of all the *A airlines for giving miles, even within Miles&More. None of this is down to A3 - it's that LH does not pay enough (read: next to nothing or nothing) to A3 on a number of low Y fare buckets.

Hopefully the E fare bucket catches up at some point, but A3 has been a little tardy in updating earning charts recently (witness the SQ change to K class, where actually members might gain rather than lose).

This! I'm mainly flying LH and have experienced this through-out the years; they have a good service but in the last 1-2 years their mileage gains keep decreasing while the prices go up.
That and the on-going screw-up with the online check-in where they don't recognize *G and thus don't open up 'preferred seats' is starting to irk me big time.

I'm seriously considering switching to a different *A member (maybe SK) once I find suitable flights to the West Coast.

I fly LH around 25 times a year. My experience is that they almost always pre-allocate me a window seat in the second to fourth row of economy, with the middle seat blocked, but only when I use my TK E+ card. With an A3*G card, I get no pre-assigned seat and find it difficult to check into the first 6 rows - on a recent full fare Y ticket, I got 20A after protesting about first being allocated middle seat 23B. A lounge attendant at the Senator lounge in Berlin informed me that LH does informally discriminate between *A cards and their IT system does allow non-LH*G frequent flyers to be recognized and given 'preferred seating'.

A LH employee admitting that the company breaks the rules (I doubt that *A allows discrimination of partners)! And this absolutely not informally, as you say, since their IT system has to have been programmed to do so. Shame on you Lufthansa! :td: :td: :td:

@johnirvine That's good information. It's unfortunate *G are not treated equal; I guess TK E+ is closer to SEN/HON qualification which might explain LH behaviour.

From what I've observed, A3 status is only recognized properly during the on-line checking if the card is already added in the booking system 48h before the departure. Otherwise, you only get an A3P on the ticket (aka no status) and you can only override it at the counter; neither the technical support nor the reservation office could help me (we see the card in the system but we don't know why it's not reflected on the ticket).

Fwiw, 2 airport agents and one representative over at the reservation center confirmed that the issue occurs a lot and most of the times with A3 cards.
All things considered, it's disappointing to see LH doing this kind of shenanigans.

Another factor that may be of relevance is the relationship cardholders have with LH agents. I have been upgraded several times on non-mileage accruing LH fares like K and received C class mileage credit. If the ticket is for an inward LH flight to Germany, it appears that out stations are involved in flight planning and duty managers know which of their frequent local passengers are on board. At one in particular, I am often greeted by name by the business class check-in agent who seems to not treat me any differently than her LH*G passengers. It is worth remembering that there is no obligation on *A airlines to offer priority economy seating to passengers with other airline *G cards. If an LH airline agent is aware that an A3*G card can be renewed for as little as €600 (and many are), do you think they will give an A3 passenger the same priority as someone else with a difficult to get ueber-gold *A black card?

I do not think, that LH staff is able to recognize difference between TK Elite and Elite+
In the system both are just TK*G. The same HON gives you nothing more than SEN if you are flying on TK or A3.

Could you please elaborate on that? How do you collect 12,000 miles (including 4 A3 flights) with €600? :confused:

I guess, for example, he means 4x29€ on A3 to have the four Aegean flights at 500 miles each, plus 484€ for, say, a single *A flight (non A3) yielding 10000 miles. Very exaggerated, of course, but true if he had written 1500-2000€.

Please, let's not start that discussion again...

I also note that A3 sucks for Eva flights. Recently flew Eva PE and only got 50% while with other *A they were giving you at least 100%.

Might be time to look at another *A program.

I guess it all depends on your preffered airline and flying pattern. For instance I fly weekly on Swiss, for which the redemption table from Aegean is way more generous that the one for Swiss M&M (even with the FTL bonus), especially with (very)discounted fares (500 flat + 50/100% if crediting to A3 vs 125/250 flat + 0% if creditting to LX).

Regarding Premium Economy if it's relatively new, maybe Aegean just need some time to update their tables...